Cameras in slaughterhouses: More surveillance for animal welfare

Cameras in slaughterhouses More surveillance for animal protection As of: November 5th, 2026 • 12:26 p.m

The Bundestag is discussing mandatory video surveillance in large slaughterhouses to improve animal protection. But exceptions for small businesses and questions about implementation cause discussions.

In recent years, animal rights activists have repeatedly uncovered abuses in individual slaughterhouses. The footage, shot with a hidden camera, shows employees mistreating animals, hitting them or kicking them. Or, for example, twisting the heads and bodies of live chickens.

The federal government wants to improve control and therefore require large slaughterhouses to install cameras. This evening the Bundestag will vote on corresponding changes to the Animal Protection Act.

In this way, the federal government is creating “transparency where it is urgently needed,” said Federal Agriculture Minister Alois Rainer at the first reading of the amendment to the law in the Bundestag. Because: “We have also seen in the past what can sometimes happen when no one is looking,” said the CSU politician.

The Ministry of Agriculture has presented a corresponding draft law. more

On the one hand, the aim is to be able to better monitor whether employees are behaving correctly. For example, that they do not use violence when driving the animals from the truck to the slaughterhouse.

Another sensitive point is anesthesia. The cameras should be able to better check whether the animals are sufficiently stunned when they are slaughtered. This is intended to ensure that pigs and cattle, for example, do not feel any pain when employees stab them in the throat and let them bleed out.

The CDU member of the Bundestag Anna Aeikens sees video surveillance as a supportive tool: "That means you can understand exactly whether there have been irregularities or not." In an interview with tagesschau.de, the CDU politician argues that video surveillance also helps companies improve their image. Because this way they can better prove that the slaughtering takes place in accordance with animal welfare.

Animals should suffer as little as possible in slaughterhouses. more

This is also how many of the large slaughterhouses in Germany see it. The meat industry association, which includes Tönnies, Vion and Westfleisch, among others, has been calling for a legal requirement for video surveillance for years. Many of the large slaughterhouses have already installed cameras or would like to do so, but have so far failed due to data protection and the fact that coordination with works councils and the union is time-consuming.

The new law should make it much easier for slaughterhouses to enforce video surveillance. The food-pleasure-restaurants union sees it differently: it criticizes the law as a constant surveillance of employees.

In the future, the slaughterhouses will have to save the video recordings for 30 days of slaughter and make them available to the responsible control authority. Steffen Reiter from the Meat Industry Association would like to see uniform nationwide technical specifications, “with authority access that takes data protection and practical suitability seriously.” That's why the association would have preferred that the veterinary offices only be able to view the video material on site at the slaughterhouse. That won't happen. The text of the law states that the slaughterhouses must provide the videos “in a common file format, sorted by date and, if necessary, time.”

The obligation to have video surveillance does not apply to everyone. Smaller slaughterhouses and butchers are exempt if they slaughter fewer than 1,000 so-called large livestock units per year. That's 1,000 cattle or 5,000 pigs or 150,000 chickens.

These exceptions are causing clear criticism, from animal rights activists and veterinarians as well as from the Greens and the Left in the Bundestag. “Every animal deserves protection,” says Ina Latendorf, agricultural spokeswoman for the Left party in the Bundestag. "If there is no video surveillance in smaller slaughterhouses, then the animals that are slaughtered there are essentially excluded from protection. I don't think that's the right approach."

Volker Gaßner from the animal protection organization “Four Paws” points out that massive grievances have already been uncovered in such companies. Gaßner argues that of the more than 4,200 slaughterhouses in Germany, only 232 should be subject to the obligation in the future.

Proponents of the exception interpret the same numbers completely differently. The majority of animals are slaughtered in these 232 slaughterhouses, namely more than 90 percent, according to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. That's why CDU politician Aeikens also believes the exception is justifiable and important so that small businesses don't stop. Because “increased requirements, especially for small business structures, do not ensure that they are promoted, but rather that the requirements become too high and people say that it is no longer worth it and that I cannot bear the costs of maintaining my business at the moment,” says Aeikens.

In Germany, an increasing number of workers from third countries are working under precarious conditions in the meat industry. more

How much added value video surveillance brings to animal protection overall will probably depend very much on how veterinary offices use the new options in practice. Staffing levels are thin in many places. In any case, the authorities can only view the video material on a random basis.

“Four Paws” therefore demands that the legislature should stipulate the use of artificial intelligence. Only with AI could the authorities evaluate the large amounts of data well. The MPs from the Union and SPD are not fulfilling this wish of the animal rights activists. They believe that an obligation to introduce AI by a certain deadline cannot currently be implemented. The technical hurdles are likely to be too high for many veterinary offices.

Some of the large slaughterhouses, however, are already working with artificial intelligence. The AI ​​checks all videos and sounds an alarm if there are any abnormalities. For example, if an employee makes a movement that looks like they are hitting or kicking an animal. The slaughterhouse's own animal welfare officer then looks at the marked areas and checks whether this was an animal welfare violation or a false alarm. This means that almost complete monitoring of the entire slaughter is now technically within reach.

This topic in the program: BR24 Radio | News | November 5, 2026 | 10:08 am